


Coffee Shop Soundtrack

by TheoMiller



Category: Knight & Rogue - Hilari Bell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Barista Fisk, Barista Michael, Bisexual Fisk, Everyone Ships Fisk/Michael, Gen, M/M, Meddling, Michael Has Excellent Hearing, Poet Fisk, aromantic asexual Kathy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-20 12:40:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 11,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3650673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheoMiller/pseuds/TheoMiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caffeine and crime solving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Six Feet Under The Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely for Alanah (theroyalprussianarmy), who wrote most of this story's plot for me.
> 
> Special thanks to Emma (knight-errant-in-the-impala) for helping me with the songs.
> 
> Each chapter is a song title, there's an entire playlist written up, this thing should be fairly monstrous by the time I finish.

“Tristram!” Michael called.

Fisk’s head jerked up and he turned to glare at the boy coming to get his coffee, who was carefully avoiding his wrathful gaze. “Tell me you poisoned that. Just something mild.”

Michael ignored him, because he’d somehow gotten it in his head that Fisk was joking when he suggested they poison his kid sister’s boyfriend’s coffee. Fisk was just waiting for someone to start dating Michael’s sister Kathy, so he could smugly refuse to poison her boyfriend or girlfriend or datemate of indiscriminate gender.

A middle-aged woman cleared her throat, because apparently ten seconds of Fisk speaking to a coworker was throwing a wrench in her day. “Venti unsweet tea, no ice,” she said, before he could even say his greeting.

“That’ll be four dollars and seventeen cents, give me a moment,” he replied, turning away to fetch a cup. “If one more person orders a godsdamn Venti I’m going to scream. Does this look like Starbucks? Did the moons get replaced with mermaid porn?”

Michael kicked him behind the counter without faltering in his perfect, friendly, “Welcome to Two Moons Coffee, what can I get for you?”

“Our tea is ridiculously overpriced because we’re a gourmet shop, why do people order our tea, there is a Wendy’s in the parking lot, you can get 40 ounces for two dollars and thirty cents… Exact same stuff…”

He got an elbow to the ribs for his muttering as Michael brushed past him.

“Here you go,” Fisk said, far more loudly, and slid the drink across to her.

She was just now getting out her credit card to swipe it, even though he’d keyed in the register before he’d went to fill the damn order, and someone in the line was tapping their foot impatiently.

“Four dollars for tea?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am, we only sell sun-brewed iced tea in the summer time, which takes an hour to make and doesn’t keep for longer than a day. Four seventeen.”

She finally swiped her card, and Fisk faked a smile.

Michael’s customer was giggling behind a delicate hand as she walked away, because somehow Michael got flirty teenagers while Fisk had to deal with businesswomen who made poor spending decisions and then blamed Fisk for it.

Most of the time, Michael didn’t find it necessary to assault Fisk to get him to shut up. Michael had freakishly good hearing, seriously, Fisk wanted him tested for the mutant gene. But technically Fisk would get fired if he told another customer where to buy cheaper coffee, because Max had already written him up for that twice.

Not that Max would fire Fisk, since Anna would make him sleep on the couch for six months if he fired Fisk. But Michael worried about these sorts of things, and also about accusations of nepotism.

“Fresh muffins!” Rosamund sing-songed as she swept through the double doors from the kitchen. “Who wants fresh muffins? Third register is now open, by the way!”

“Good morning, welcome to Two Moons, what delicious beverage can I make for you today?” Michael said beside him as he gave the usual greeting, their voices overlapping.

“He sounds a lot more cheerful than you,” said the next person in Fisk’s line.

“He gets to serve the pretty boys,” Fisk replied, with a nod to the 8.5 currently ordering a green tea from Michael. “You should’ve seen the guy who ordered a protein shake from me this morning. Apparently he’s always shirtless, because there was some sort of skin cancer forming on his chest. We’d add a No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service sign, but then who would buy our protein shakes?”

“You’re remind me of the sassy gay guy from that show on Oxygen,” she told him, laughing.

Fisk schooled his face perfectly. “Jeffrey Dahmer?”

Michael nearly pulled off the disapproving look he shot Fisk, except his eyes were too bright, and his lips suspiciously thin.

“Err, can I just get a peppermint mocha?” the customer asked. She seemed to have realized she’d made a faux pas, or maybe the Dahmer joke had landed too well, because she was suddenly very subdued.

“Oh!” Michael said, as he handed his customer the green tea, “Fisk, remind me to add peppermint extract to the grocery list.”

Fisk lifted the bottle of peppermint syrup in acknowledgement without tearing his eyes away from the steamed milk spout, because he really did not need to scald himself today.

-

“I ran the preliminary numbers for the month,” Judith announced.

“Please tell me you’re talking about lotto numbers, I really need a raise.”

Michael’s lips twitched, and Fisk was too caught up in feeling smug that he’d made him actually crack that he completely missed the fact that Judith was still talking.

“Sorry, what?”

“No, don’t mind us discussing the future of the business, you just keep staring at Michael’s lips,” said Judith, and Fisk scowled at her. “Like I was saying, we’ve got to have more events, and Rosamund’s decided we should host a poetry slam. She’s already volunteered to be one of the judges, and I think—”

“Don’t you write poetry?”

Fisk blinked and turned back to look at Michael, who was looking at him very intensely and apparently had noticed that Fisk wrote poetry, which was Very Decidedly Not Good. “What?” He said. Playing dumb should work, right?

“You write poetry, don’t you? I’ve seen you counting out syllables and using rhyming apps.”

Apparently not. Fisk fished around for a convenient lie, while Judith looked as though Christmas had come early. “You write poetry, little brother? That’s adorable.”

Rosamund was smiling at Fisk.

“I, uh, rap,” lied Fisk. “Wait, no, that’s even worse than the truth. Yes, I write poetry, but it’s mostly Elizabethan sonnets, not really poetry slam stuff.”

Michael was giving him puppy dog eyes, which was just unfair, because he knew Fisk couldn’t resist those. “I’ll make you peanut butter cookies with crunchy peanut butter?”

“Fine! Fine, I will read poetry at the damned slam, just don’t expect me to win or anything.”

“Just write from the heart,” said Rosamund.

“He hasn’t got one,” said Judith.

Fisk was surrounded by assholes.

-

“I promised you peanut butter cookies, didn’t I?” asked Michael, as he double-checked their grocery list – or quadruple checked, as the case may be. “Right, yes, so, crunchy peanut butter… and I’ll need more eggs if I’m making cookies and my cupcakes.”

“How did you know I write poetry?” Fisk blurted out.

Michael frowned. “I told you, I noticed you counting syllables under your breath.”

“But that doesn’t explain how you guessed poetry, or why you were paying attention to what I mutter when I’m writing.”

“Well, I reflexively listen in on you to make sure you’re not insulting customers, so maybe it carries over. Ooh, there’s a parking spot.”

Fisk yanked on the wheel. “I got it, I got it. I could’ve been writing music, you know,” he added.

“You can’t sing.”

“I—” Fisk scowled and put the car in park. “Okay, true.”

“Why are you so upset about this? A lot of great poets are men, and you don’t usually confine yourself to ridiculous, toxic concepts of masculinity like—”

“You heard Judith,” he said.

Michael sighed. “She’s your big sister, you know she doesn’t mean anything by teasing you. She loves you.”

“Eggs first?” Fisk suggested, only to get Michael to go off on his usual speech about the correct order to get groceries and how the stores were carefully ordered so you didn’t come to refrigerated items before non-refrigerated items. If he was lucky, Michael might even be persuaded to argue with Fisk about the order things go on the conveyor belt at checkout, even though Fisk agreed on all accounts anyway.


	2. Poet

Fisk was in a particularly foul mood the day of the poetry slam. His usual running commentary of people’s orders was staccato and frustrated.

“Really. The order I add the syrups in matters. Okay. Okay!”

Michael nudged the ambient music a little louder, because Fisk wasn’t exactly keeping his voice down.

“Can I get a coffee, black, four shots of espresso?” asked the only customer in the line at the time, shifting from foot to foot and rubbing at his face. Michael glanced him over in concern; not many customers came in at two in the afternoon, and four shots of espresso was a hell of a pick-me-up.

“Do you want to grab a nap on the couch, maybe, instead?” suggested Michael. “Sleep is great for your brain, and you can go through an entire cycle of REM in just 90 minutes.”

“No time,” he muttered.

“All right, uh, that’ll be… fifteen dollars, actually, so—”

“That’s fine.”

Michael turned to relay the order to Fisk, but he was already jabbing the espresso machine’s buttons with unnecessary violence. “Four shots,” Fisk muttered. “Four! You’re already shaking, you’re going to die right here in my coffee shop, and I’m going to have to clean up the body.”

“Uh, you can sit down and wait,” said Michael, half-hoping the man would pass out and get some much needed rest. “It’ll be up in a moment.”

“Excuse me,” asked a woman who’d been camped out at one of their tables for about two hours with her laptop, “can I get free refills on this?” Her fake smile told Michael she knew perfectly well she couldn’t, and was just hoping to be able to convince Michael to let her do it just the once. Fisk always said Michael looked like an easy mark.

“I’m afraid not,” said Michael, smiling back at her.

“It was worth a shot,” she replied with a shrug.

Fisk put the four-espresso drink on the counter. “You can’t get a free refill on IBC root beer at a chain steakhouse, but sure, we do refills on our gourmet Italian coffee…” His continued tirade under his breath suggested that the woman make the switch to Kopi Luwak if she was going to continue ordering ridiculously expensive coffee and treating it like watery soda fountain drinks.

“I need to check on my tiramisu,” said Michael, abruptly, and hurried into the back room before he cracked up. Fisk was the funniest person he knew, which was unfortunate, because he did his best not to encourage his utter lack of professionalism.

He shook with silent laughter for a moment, and then texted Rosamund to let her know that Fisk was in fine form today.

Rosa – 2:05

What did he do this time?

Michael – 2:06

Someone asked for a free refill on one of our specialty coffees.

Rosa – 2:08

1st of all, wtf. 2nd of all, please tell me he didn’t say anything to them.

Michael – 2:09

No, but he may suggest she try Kopi Luwak if she tries again.

Rosa – 2:11

Are you hiding in the kitchen while you laugh?

Michael – 2:12

I wouldn’t call it HIDING.

Rosa – 2:17

Put your game face on and get out there, cos.

-

Michael had somehow gotten roped into being a judge along with Rosa and one of her theatre friends, even though he had no idea what ‘good’ poetry was supposed to sound like. Or look like, since that was apparently a category.

The woman Rosa had brought along, Callista Boniface, had simply patted him on the head like a child and then ignored him.

It turned out, though, that he needn’t have worried: it became quickly obvious what he was supposed to be doing. A girl with emerald green hair recited a poem about a girl, but she kept her hands jammed in her pockets and her gaze downcast. Someone else did a great job of conveying anger with posture and tone, but his rhymes were contrived.

Fisk, though. Fisk got up there, he winked at someone in the audience, played his introduction for laughs, and then let his gaze flicker up to meet Michael’s. “Uh,” he said, “My poem is called ‘I Am Odysseus’.”

He barely even paid attention to the rest of the people, because he was busy wondering why Fisk had never shown him any of his poetry, it was good. He was rather outraged, at the end, when Judith was calculating the averages for each contestant and he discovered Rosamund and Callista had both given Fisk 8’s.

“Fisk was amazing!” said Michael. “He sounded like a tragic hero, it was perfect!”

“It was good,” Rosamund agreed, “but it wasn’t a 10, Michael,” she added gently.

Judith snorted. “He only likes it because it’s about him.”

“Oh, is that what’s going on?” Callista said.

Michael looked between the three women, officially and utterly bemused. “Why would Fisk write a poem about me? And why would I be Aeneas? I’m nothing like Aeneas!”

“I think he chose Aeneas because Achilles is overused,” Judith mused. Which explained absolutely nothing, but then, Judith had seemed to have decided that if her brother got to be the snarky one, she was going to be the smugly enigmatic one. They still hadn’t decided who the smart one was.

Fisk was moving through the crowd towards him, though, so he stopped paying attention to them in favor of waving at him. “They’re laughing, that’s not a good sign,” was the first thing Fisk said when he reached Michael.

Michael barely spared them a glance. “Ignore them, they’re being deliberately mysterious.”

“Or you’re being deliberately obtuse,” said Fisk.

“I’m never deliberately obtuse.”

“Oh, so it’s just innate, huh?”

“I was going to compliment your poetry,” Michael told him, “but if you’re going to be rude…”

“No, no, feed my ego, tell me how much you liked it,” Fisk said, with a small, genuine smile crossing his face before he gave Michael his usual shit-eating grin.

“The numbers say you’re not going to make top three, want to go make ourselves coffee in the kitchen so we can duck the crowd?” Michael suggested.

Fisk shrugged. “It’s a decent consolation prize, as long as you make it. Oh, I want a butterbeer latte.”

“You mean you want half-made caramel with hot milk and a dusting of cinnamon. Because calling that a latte is a disgrace to the name of lattes.”

“Says the man who makes peppermint cupcakes. No one likes peppermint, Michael, it’s something you use after eating Italian or when you really need a shiv around Christmas.”

Michael rolled his eyes.


	3. When The Day Met The Night

**The Boys Are Oblivious Support Chat (3)**

**Judith** : Ohhhhh boy.

 **Rosamund** : yep

 **Judith** : Is this happening?

This is happening.

 **Rosamund** : yeppppppp

 **Kathy** : What’s happening?

 **Rosamund** : YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS

 **Judith** : Fisk is reading his poem.

 **Kathy** : Was that tonight? The poetry slam thing?

 **Judith** : It’s a love poem.

 **Kathy** : wHAT

WHATTTTTT

He wrote Michael a love poem?!?!?!?!?!

…it was for Michael, right, we didn’t get blindsided by a jealousy angle?

 **Rosamund** : 100% FOR MICHAEL

THE EYESEX 100% CONFIRMS

ALSO CLASSICAL REFERENCES

 **Kathy** : Well, yeah, it’s Fisk.

What a fucking nerd.

Guyssssss. Hurry up. I’m dying to know about it here.

 **Judith** : It’s being recorded, I’ll have a transcript of it by morning. Rosamund’s busy judging.

Also, you’re studying theoretical mathematics, dumbass, you can’t call people nerds.

I mean, you can, but it’s pretty hypocritical.

 **Kathy** : Well, obviously I’m a nerd, but the department is surprisingly low on nerds.

I mean, seriously, Meg is athletic, and she hasn’t even read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, despite my best efforts to the contrary.

And Rupert’s. Well, he’s Rupert.

 **Judith** : Rich ROTC Rupert or Big Brother Rupert?

 **Kathy** : ROTC Rupert. My brother Rupert’s a huge nerd.

 **Judith** : Must run in the family. Speaking of! how’s our favorite controlling father?

 **Kathy** : He’s having dinner with one of the OSHA higher-ups this weekend. And yes, the OSHA inspection of Seven Oaks’ main headquarters is next week. Because that doesn’t sound shady at alllllllllllllllll.

I’m invited, but I’m going to blow it off, I’ll say I have a paper to work on.

How about you? How’s the Fisk family patriarch?

 **Judith** : He’s distracted by this case. I mean, it’s a career maker for sure, brutal homicide, two different eyewitnesses, tons of priors, the prosecution definitely has it in the bag, and he gets to set the precedent for the entire state with his sentencing, and having his name attached to it is going to give him an in for a lot more interesting cases than drunken brawls and some corporate embezzlement.

I’m thinking the defense is going to run with the unreliability of the second witness, since he’s a known gambler, but I feel like they’d be better off with the first one, an old woman dying of leukemia, since it’s easier to prove drug-induced impairment than a framing conspiracy.

I’d certainly get an oncologist in to talk about the dementia associated with chemotherapy, at the very least.

 **Kathy** : …Not gonna lie, that sounds boring.

 **Judith** : As opposed to multi-variable calculus.

 **Kathy** : Precisely.

Seriously, how long is the slam?????

 **Rosamund** : Gimme a sec, jeez.

_attachment: fisks_gay_ass_poem.docx_

**Kathy** : Angsty Fisk makes a not-as-rare-as-you’d-think appearance.

 **Rosamund** : He really ran with the Arthurian legend thing.

 **Kathy** : Possibly because Michael is an actual literal Disney prince.

Have you met my brother?

 **Rosamund** : Uh, yes.

I’ve also heard him sing.

Half-expected tiny, adorable woodland creatures to come help him brew coffee.

 **Judith** : That would violate so many health codes.

 **Rosamund** : You do realize, if they ever get their act together, they’re going to be, like, making out all over the shop?

 **Judith** : File that under “mental images I do not need”.

 **Kathy** : EWWWW.

ROSA WHY.

 **Judith** : Besides, it’s not like they’re ever going to get their act together.

 **Kathy** : Well, maybe if they got a nudge…

 **Rosamund** : We made a pact.

 **Kathy** : Yeah, three years ago, when Fisk was a surly seventeen year old who disappeared for three months every time he felt an actual emotion.

Circumstances have changed.

Maybe the pact should too.

 **Judith** : Fisk is still a surly child who runs away from his feelings, he’s just slightly older and better at hiding it. And it’s not like your brother is the epitome of well-adjusted social interaction either. He’s very preachy.

 **Kathy** : …I’d be offended on Michael’s behalf, but my brain is too tired for outrage.

That doesn’t mean we can’t NUDGE them. Just a teeeensy bit.

 **Rosamund** : The slam brought in a ton of money, we’re definitely going to do it again, maybe this time Michael will be hit by a clue-by-four.

But we stay subtle.

I don’t want Fisk running off to LA again.

 **Kathy** : Oh, shit, do I have a paper due? I think I have a paper due.


	4. It's Not A Side Effect

“Good news!” Rosamund said cheerfully the next morning.

Fisk squinted at her. “Dick Cheney got hit by a truck?”

“Okay, why is that your go-to guess for good news?” Michael said. “It’s bad to wish people ill, you know. And getting hit by a truck is a really awful way to die, I would think.”

“I don’t want him to die, just to languish in a hospital bed in immense pain, preferably with bed sores, until he dies of old age.”

Rosamund looked between them, Fisk grinning like a maniac, Michael probably trying to look disapproving, and then cleared her throat. “We’re having another poetry event, this time just poetry reading. Oh, and Michael, we’re gonna be doing latte art that night, so you should practice this week.”

Fisk frowned. “I’m way better at latte art, why is he doing that?” he said.

“Hey!” said Michael.

They both ignored him. “You’re going to be reading more poetry. Anyway, I have muffins to make. Latte art, Michael.”

Michael immediately turned towards Fisk. “I can so make better latte art than you.”

“Bull.”

-

“Okay,” said Fisk, staring down at the hyper-realistic tabby cat Michael had made. “I don’t know how you did that, but I’m willing to concede you’re better at pictures in milk foam.”

“Thank you,” Michael said, with a tilt of his chin.

Fisk nudged him when he remembered to stop staring at his throat. “Don’t let it go to your head, I’ll bet my penmanship is better in lattes too.”

“Oh, really?” grinned Michael.

Someone cleared their throat. “Hi,” said a familiar voice from the other side of the counter.

Fisk wiped his hands on his apron as Michael immediately launched himself over the counter – god damned gymnast – to beat him to hugging Kathy. “Oh my god,” Michael said, without setting her down. “You didn’t tell me you were coming to visit!”

“Well, it’s not like we had plans,” Fisk pointed out, when Michael finally let his sister go. “How did you get away from school?”

“Family emergency,” Kathy said. She leaned across the counter. “Are you going to share any of those lattes?” She asked.

“Give me a second,” Fisk told her.

He carefully carried the tray of lattes over to an empty table, and barely managed to set it down before Kathy slipped her arms around him. “Hey,” she said, against the fabric of his shirt.

“Hey yourself,” he said.

She kissed him on the cheek before she sat down, careful to smooth her pleated skirt out beneath her as she returned her attention to her brother. “So, Fisk tells me you’ve been working on your peppermint cupcakes again.”

“I’ve got the chocolate ones perfected in terms of flavor, I think, but they’re a little too dense. And the vanilla ones are fluffy enough now, but they’re also crumbly after about three hours, and the vanilla flavor keeps getting overpowered by peppermint.”

“Did you figure out your icing swirl yet?”

“Yes!” said Michael. “Thicker frosting means the coloring doesn’t bleed as much and they stay red and white swirls instead of pink ombre.”

“Do you understand any of this?” Kathy asked Fisk.

He did, actually. His mother had watched a lot of reality shows about fashion and baking and home decoration when she was dying and her hands weren’t up for the task of sewing or crocheting or knitting, and Fisk had climbed into her hospital bed and watched with her every day after school.

“Not a word,” said Fisk, though he knew she knew better.

Kathy picked up the cat latte and smiled down at it. “It’s almost too pretty to drink,” she said. “Do you ever look at things you want and feel like you’ll ruin them if you touch them?”

There was a too-long silence where Fisk stared at her and Michael stared at her and she just kept smiling into the coffee like she'd caught them with their hands in the cookie jar and was going to smugly hold it over their heads for the foreseeable future. Or maybe Fisk was projecting his own experiences with having sisters onto Kathy.

“You mean like when there’s perfectly unbroken snow everywhere and you just want to trample all over it?” Michael asked eventually.

“Something like that,” she said. “I think you’ve got a customer, boys,” she added.

Michael jumped up and went to charm the customer, probably trying to sell them a discounted lukewarm latte with a design in the foam. But Fisk was distracted by Kathy, who was sipping at her mug of coffee a bit too innocently for Fisk’s liking. “What?” he said.

“What?” she said.

"You, smirking."

“I’m just really, really glad to be here,” she said. “LA is—well, you know how it is, that city is nonstop with the noise and the people and lights.”

Fisk snorted. “Clearly you’ve never been to Vegas.”

“Worse?”

“Way worse.”

“I’ve been to Reno,” she said. “That’s as close as I got, though. And it’s actually pretty quiet in Reno, outside of that one stretch that wants to be Vegas.”

“Is that what you’re doing here?”

And there it was again, the too-innocent look. “What?”

“Sightseeing. Is that why you’re here?”

She glanced up at Michael, making sure he was out of earshot, and then sighed, long and exhausted. “Next semester, I should be starting my applied maths,” she said. “You know, specializing, leaning towards accounting, so I can go into the family business.”

“Because nepotism always works out well, yeah,” said Fisk, who was privately just glad Sevenson senior had stopped trying to bully Michael into following the path to CFO.

“Well, I’m not going to. Which is fine, actually, I’ve got a job, and a National Merit Scholarship, so it won’t be devastating to my finances when he cuts me off, but it will mean I can’t take cheery jaunts off to spend a week with Michael. Not that dad knows where I am, of course, he thinks I’m Santa Barbara with Meg and some girls from UC for the volleyball tournament.”

“Always a pleasure to be reminded that my family is comparably sane and healthy,” Fisk quipped.

Kathy tilted her head at him, her gaze too fond to be reproachful. “You’re taking care of my brother, right?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am, 24/7,” he said, “but it’s really a two or three man job. Maybe a full team of psychiatric professionals. He got up to watch the sunrise last week.” Fisk had gotten up too, had wrapped his duvet around himself and curled around the coffee Michael wordlessly provided, and possibly whined about how inconsiderate it was to make noise by getting up when people were trying to sleep, even though Michael had been pretty quiet, until Michael caved and made cinnamon streusel muffins.

She reached over and patted Fisk on the head, disturbing his carefully placed beanie. “Cry me a river, William Wordsworth, cry me a river.”

Fisk started to reply and then froze. “Wait,” he said, with a dawning sense of horror.

“Oh, yeah, I have a copy of your poem. I’m thinking of printing it out, maybe framing it, hanging it beside the picture of Michael in his Pooh costume…”


	5. Don't Stop

Michael hurried to gather discarded clothes when they reached the apartment; he hadn’t been expecting company, and the place is a mess, and Kathy’s used to much nicer apartments in LA, ones with huge plate glass windows that let in all the light and have electronic blinds, not their tiny place with the fridge door held on by gate hinges he’d bought at Home Depot.

“Michael,” said Kathy, amused, “calm down, it’s just normal clutter.”

“If you’d given me some warning,” he said. But he was too happy she was here to even pretend to sound annoyed that she’d surprised him.

She shrugged and plopped down on the middle of the couch without even glancing twice at the pair of Fisk’s boxers that were tossed over the arm. “Hadn’t decided to come until last minute. I’m glad I did, though. I’ve already got plans to go shopping with Rosa tomorrow. It’s so nice of her to cover your shift so we can hang out!”

“Rosa’s amazing,” agreed Michael. “I kind of wish she’d agreed to move in here with me and Fisk.”

“It’s a two-bedroom apartment,” Kathy pointed out.

Michael raised his eyebrows at her, silently, because Kathy literally lived in a two-bedroom apartment with two other people. She rolled her eyes.

“It’s different when you’re living with a couple. Plus, we also have two bathrooms, and my apartment is huge.”

“Mmhm. I’m just saying, Rosa would’ve been a good addition to our daily routine, and I feel like she and Rudy really rushed into that whole cohabitation thing.”

“That’s because you’re a prude,” Kathy said, and rested her head on Michael’s shoulder. “Want to watch Kitchen Nightmares?”

“We don’t have to, you know, we could watch Mythbusters or something.”

“Ugh, no, I am on break from all things STEM right now. I might actually kill someone if I have to derive another Maclaurin series for another inverse trigonometric function.”

“Trigonometry, that’s the bit with the Greek letters, right?”

“Michael, that’s like asking if fondant is the bit with the sugar.”

“Except it’s math. There’s a reason I’m not going to school to be SOI’s CFO, Kitkat.”

She huffed at the childhood nickname. “Stop talking and queue up the angry Scotsman.”

-

Michael waved over his shoulder when he heard Fisk come in the door. “Kathy made enchiladas,” he said, just to try and get a rise out of him.

“She would never mortally offend me in such a way,” said Fisk, without even pausing in his usual ritual of dumping his keys in the bowl and kicking off his ridiculous hipster shoes. “Also I can smell the meatloaf, dumbass.”

“It’s still your favorite, right, Fisk?” asked Kathy.

“Yep,” said Fisk, at the same time Michael said, “Of course.”

“How long till the loaf’s ready?”

“Still another fifteen minutes,” said Kathy.

Fisk sighed. “Good, I need a six-hour shower and possibly a nap.”

His footsteps faded down the hall. When they’d first met, Michael had noticed that, oddly enough, Fisk’s footfalls were always quiet, even silent when the conditions were right, and he seemed to make a habit of trying to blend into the background to the point that no-one noticed him. And he still did that, especially in times of confrontation, but now he dropped the carefully quieted steps alongside his boots and his keys when he came home, walking through the apartment like he was a name on the lease instead of a cat burglar stealing through.

Michael was listening to Fisk putter around the bathroom, getting the shower to a temperature between freezing and scalding, when Kathy settled onto the couch beside him again.

“You _like_ him,” she said, grinning wickedly at him.

Michael stared at her, trying to figure out when his little sister with the too-long limbs and the gold-rimmed granny glasses in a perpetual state of sliding down her nose turned into a young woman with ulterior motives and an entire repertoire of smirks and knowing grins.

“You’ve always been too smart for your own good.”

“I know,” she said. “The question is, what are you going to do about it?”

“Do about it?”

“You like him, he likes you, this isn’t grade school anymore, I shouldn’t have to explain to you how this works.”

“What?”

Kathy looked at him like he was an idiot, but in an oddly fond sort of way that reminded him uncomfortably of Fisk. “Michael—”

The shower cut off and they fell silent. Then, more quietly, Kathy said, “I’m not going to tell you what you should do. I get your concerns, I do. But I want you to be happy, and I think Fisk can make you happy. I think he already does. And I think you make him pretty happy too.”

Michael frowned in thought. Fisk had actually, literally fled the city the first time Michael had referred to him as his best friend. He’d shown up on Kathy’s front door, scowling, because he didn’t know anyone who wasn’t a mutual friend of Michael’s and his but at least she lived far enough away for him to get a breath. Of course he’d kept it to himself when he realized he was starting to see Fisk as a romantic prospect.

“Oh, gods, what did you do?” Fisk said, rubbing at his hair with a towel as he reentered the room. Michael, distracted by the fact that Fisk was shirtless and damp, waved stupidly at him.

“I was explaining the real-world application of multiplying matrices of different dimensions,” she said. “He was bitching about high school math again.”

“Look, the only interesting things I learned in high school were written on the insides of bathroom stalls.”

“What did you learn from the inside of a bathroom stall?” Fisk asked, and Kathy sighed, probably because she’d heard this story before and wanted to be out of immediate range when Fisk shrieked.

“Well, one boy wrote the pattern to Miss Kilzceski’s test answers every week. There was also a guide to making sure your drunk friends don’t die in their sleep in one. But the most salient was definitely the time a guy wrote up the recipe for a very potent date rape drug on every stall in the bathrooms.”

Fisk dropped the towel. “WHAT?” He said, far too loudly.

“Don’t worry,” said Michael. “I alerted the guidance office to it.”

“Yeah, and they did nothing but paint over it, so Michael ran around doing handwriting comparisons until he found the guilty party, and handed over the top ten most likely suspects and a picture of the writing to the local police, and it was enough for a warrant. They found everything mentioned in the recipe, plus extremely concentrated versions of the final product, plus fake ID’s to get into bars.”

Fisk looked impressed. Michael felt a warm glow spreading through his chest, not entirely due to the fact that he was blushing. He glanced at Kathy, who looked smug, and then realized he’d made his decision. A plan was forming already…


	6. The Kids Aren't Alright

Fisk woke up to the sound of Kathy and Michael discussing horses and immediately regretted his decision to move in with a morning person, because it was seven a.m. come on who wakes up this early?

“Coffee,” Fisk grumbled.

Michael passed him a mug without pausing the conversation. Fisk curled around the cup like Golum protecting the one ring and was about to start drinking when he realized there was a shape in the foam. He leaned back and frowned down at the heart. He was suddenly very much wide awake, his own heart pounding too fast for having just woken up. Kathy glanced at him, confused, and he—sort of panicked. He gulped down half of it in one go, immediately regretting it when he realized it was ridiculously, scalding hot.

“Um,” said Kathy, staring at Fisk.

He gasped for cooler air, and Michael looked at him like he’d just grown a second head and started speaking French. “Are you okay?”

“I was trying to ingest caffeine as quickly as possible,” Fisk said. His voice was raspy. “Figured I’d need it, to deal with not one but two Sevensons.”

Michael frowned. “Was it too hot? Do you need a glass of water?”

“I’m fine,” said Fisk.

Kathy looked between them for a moment. Then, “Michael, can I borrow your conditioner? I really need a shower before I go shopping with Rosa, or I’m going to look awful by comparison.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Michael said. “But, yes, of course you can—do you have body wash? If not, you should try Fisk’s, his smells great.”

Fisk stared at him, but he didn’t seem to notice that he was being really weird - weird even compared to his usual weirdness - so he gave up on it.

-

Work started normally enough, despite the odd start to the day. There was a brief moment of panic when a man came in, asking for hot chocolate, with the added warning that he was deathly allergic to coffee and that even the slightest cross-contamination would send him into anaphylactic shock.

Fisk stared at him. “Why are you in a coffee shop?”

“I’m just ordering hot chocolate,” the man said.

“This is a coffee shop, everything is cross contaminated, the air is probably 15 percent coffee, you probably shouldn’t even be breathing in here. What if there’s coffee grounds in the vent? What if you go into shock? Even if the liability insurance covers people dying, the paperwork is going to be a nightmare, and I might actual murder my brother-in-law if he lectures me because some idiot decided to walk into the lion’s den and order a hot cocoa.”

“Pardon?” said the man.

Fisk plastered on a smile. “I said it’s coming right up.”

Michael swept out of the back room with a tray of cookies, whistling what sounded suspiciously like an Elvis song. “Good morning, everyone!” He called cheerfully.

The customers actually acknowledged him, and Fisk snorted. “Must be past nine,” he said. “What can I get for you?” He asked the next customer in line.

“One of those cookies,” said the woman, “and a black coffee.”

“Sure,” Fisk said, and then spotted the cookies. They were all shaped in various ways, with brightly colored icing to decorate them, but there was one in the back with… “Michael?” he said. “Why is my name on one of those?”

“It’s for you,” Michael told him cheerfully, as he scooped up a cookie and poured a cup of black coffee for the woman.

Fisk stared at the heart-shaped cookie. He put the cup on the coffee and the cookie in a paper baggie like his hands were on autopilot. “Um. Why?”

“Because you like sugar cookies?”

“Yes, but why a heart cookie? Why a heart in my morning coffee? Are you trying to seduce me or something?”

Michael shrugged. “Yeah.”

Fisk, who’d thrown the last bit in to try and throw Michael for a loop and startle the truth out of him, gaped. “You’re what?” he said.

“I think the more accurate term is woo. Or, you know, the modern version - I’m trying to ask you out.”

Fisk dropped a bottle of syrup.

“You what?”

“I like you,” Michael snapped. “I like you and I’d really like to date you, okay?”

“No! Not okay! You can’t just randomly spring this on me!”

A middle-aged woman with a layered blonde bob cleared her throat impatiently. Fisk whirled on her. “Kind of in the middle of something right now!”

“Do your job, Fisk,” said Michael.

Fisk snatched the bottle back up and brandished it at him. “I was doing my job! I was doing it perfectly well before you propositioned me during the busiest time of the day!”

“You’re the one who was pushing it, I was planning to talk to you about it after work.”

“Well, excuse me for wanting to know why my best friend was making me heart-shaped latte art and cookies!”

“Oh, come on, you wrote me a damn poem and then read it in front of an entire crowd of hipsters!”

“I—” Fisk broke off. He hadn’t expected Michael to catch that - he was not raised on a steady diet of advanced textbooks and classic literature, not like Fisk was. “How the hell did you know it was about you?”

“You just told me,” Michael retorted.

Fisk snapped his mouth shut and took a deep breath. He realized, rather belatedly, that he’d finished making the impatient woman’s drink and passed it off to her before fishing around for the hot cocoa mix for the next customer.

They worked in relative silence for a bit, filling orders and telling people their totals in subdued voices. Finally, Fisk risked a glance at Michael and found Michael already looking at him. “What?” he muttered.

“I’m sorry if I overwhelmed you. But I like you. And I think we should give this a shot.”

“We live and work together, Michael, when we inevitably break up after a ridiculous, petty fight, we’re going to damn well miserable.”

“And then we’ll work through it. You know I can’t hold a grudge.”

Fisk looked at him. “Two words: Yorick. Thrope.”

“Against you. I could never hold a grudge against you. You’re like the Anti-Thrope.”

That was… actually pretty complimentary.

“If we were to go on a date,” Fisk ventured.

Michael grinned. “Dinner. Actual dinner, at that restaurant with that ridiculously long menu, what’s it called?”

“Cheesecake Factory,” the young man in line volunteered, without looking away from his phone.

“That’s it,” agreed Michael. “Cheesecake Factory. Tomorrow night, after my shift.”

Fisk hesitated.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” snapped a teenager waiting for her drink. “The fact that you’re so concerned for the integrity of your friendship that you’ll ignore your obvious attraction for one him is reason enough to give it a fair shot.”

“Shut up, you’re like, twelve,” he said.

“Fifteen,” she said.

He turned back to Michael. “You do the asking, you do the paying.”

“Of course,” said Michael. “So that’s a yes?”

Fisk rolled his eyes. “Yes, gods help me. It’s a yes.”


	7. Of All The Gin Joints

Michael showed up to the restaurant with flowers to surprise Fisk. Fisk showed up to the restaurant with aluminum foil wrapped around wet paper towels so they wouldn’t wilt. Michael tried to laugh, because _of course_ , but it came out strangled.

The hostess seemed perturbed by the weird tension between them, and moved rather quickly away from their table once she seated them.

"I--" said Fisk, at the exact same time that Michael went with, "So--"

They both broke off, and Michael huffed a laugh. "This is awkward," he said.

"Yep," said Fisk.

They both fell silent again, and anxiety built up in Michael's chest, a restless coil of frustration until - "this is ridiculous. We're overthinking this."

"Uhh, yeah, so. We just. Talk."

"About something. What do we usually talk about?"

"Work. Customers. Grocery lists."

Michael sighed and tilted his head back to look up at the ceiling. Then, "this place is hideous."

"It's like cheap imitations of eight different eras of art history threw up on the decor," agreed Fisk. "The fake stucco? The old brass sconces? The weird murals with cherubs? Why cherubs?"

"The fake limestone!" Added Michael. "It's all grey, and the stucco is, like, apricot, and then the faux leather booths are all this horrible maroon, and the wood is - what is this? It's too light to be cherry stain, is it oak?"

"It's less a palette of complimentary colours and more of a list of things that could look classy if they were the focal point of a theme. Like, the Grecian columns, the fake stone, it could look like a ancient Greek winery, with some nice grape leaf detailing. Or the stucco could work, if they did the whole Spanish villa thing, all warm colours."

"It's a disaster," said Michael. Their apartment was thrift store chic, according to Fisk, but they’d painstakingly reupholstered the mismatched furniture with old sheets, so it at least matched better than the patterned booths and the florid chair cushions, even if it smelled faintly of dust and mothballs.

Fisk was looking at him somewhat askance when he stopped surveying the restaurant.

“What?”

"I can't believe you're letting me complain about it this loudly, isn't it your job to keep me from being a dick above a certain decibel level?"

"You're not a dick," Michael said. At Fisk's look, he amended, "okay, maybe you're a bit of a dick. But it's... It's not a bad thing."

"Then why do you pinch me under the counter and pretend not to find me hilarious?"

"Because I know you're secretly a nice person who just likes to complain about things and I want to make sure you don’t alienate people."

Michael watched Fisk's expression, the tiny flicker of surprise to something more vulnerable before he rearranged it to sceptical. "Or maybe there's a third layer underneath the second layer that's the same as the first. Like with pie."

"Don't quote Dr Horrible at me," Michael said, "that makes me Penny, and I don't want to die."

Fisk grinned at him, the awkwardness slipping away. “You would totally do the humanitarian shtick! Go on, sing her little Helping Hands jingle.”

“Or we could do the duet,” said Michael, because he knew Fisk couldn’t carry a tune in a wheelbarrow. Actually, he sounded vaguely like a caterwauling cat. “Do you think they allow karaoke?”

“Couldn’t make the place any tackier.”

-

“That was fun,” said Michael.

Fisk shrugged. “Yeah, I guess it was pretty okay. Thanks for the daisies,” he said. “They’ll look great on the thrift store table.”

“Don’t be cynical, you like daisies.” Michael paused. “Why do you like daisies?”

“My mother liked them. They were the only things my father could afford, and she always said the neon colored ones brightened up the hospital rooms.”

Michael stopped dead, and after a few steps, Fisk noticed. “What?”

“You offered personal information without me prying,” said Michael.

“You don’t pry,” Fisk said. “You… hang back and wish you could pry but deliberately tiptoe around my space instead.”

“I don’t like putting pressure on you,” said Michael. He hesitated, and then, “Would it be okay if I kissed you?” he asked.

“I—” Fisk broke off, and Michael followed his gaze to where a broad-shouldered man had cornered a woman in an alley. “Do not,” said Fisk, halfheartedly. Michael considered whether he was capable of walking away from a mugging, and then shrugged, kissed Fisk’s cheek, and jogged towards them.

“Hey!” he said loudly, when he was close enough.

The would-be mugger spun around and stared at him for a moment, shocked. Then he lunged for Michael, who was now remembering a particular saying about cornered rats.

“Lower Haight,” Fisk said, from what was probably a safe distance away. “And hurry—Michael!” he yelped, because, yes, the mugger had a knife.

Michael grabbed at the man’s wrist and stopped the knife, only to get a punch to the gut a moment later from his free hand. He doubled over, still gripping the man’s wrist like his life depended on it. Which, depending on how handy the guy was with a knife, it very well could.

Fisk came out of nowhere, and his foot connected with the mugger’s ribcage. Michael heard the clatter of metal to the ground and stumbled back, still trying to catch the breath that had been knocked out of him, when he heard the wail of sirens. The mugger made a grab for the knife.

“Not a chance, bud,” said Fisk, and snatched the blade up. He held it in a worryingly competent way, like he was more than capable of using it.

A patrol car came screeching up, and a moment later, someone shouted, “Drop the knife!”

Fisk let it fall out of his fingers. He swore violently, and Michael realized with a jolt that the would-be victim had fled during the scuffle, leaving no witnesses but him and Fisk and the mugger.

“This… looks bad,” said Michael.

The cop smiled humorlessly. “Yeah, it does. Hands behind your head, sir.”


	8. I Bet My Life

“This is the worst date I’ve ever been on,” Fisk said, staring at the grill between them and the cop in the front seat.

“In junior high I took a girl on a picnic and she stole the basket and my horse,” said Michael, because apparently he had to win at everything, even bad dates.

Tommy - the mugger - looked between Michael and Fisk. “Y’all on a date?” He said.

“Our first one,” said Michael.

“Damn,” Tommy said. “What y’all doing attacking a guy when you on a date?”

“He was feeding into his own hero complex, I just got caught up in it.”

“I couldn’t just leave that woman to fend for herself, Fisk. What if she desperately needed the contents of that purse?”

“I didn’t see any woman,” Tommy lied, with a smirk.

Fisk rolled his eyes. “Uh-huh. That was quick thinking there, buddy. Except the knife is covered in your fingerprints too, and I’m betting only yours are on the blade from opening it. If it goes to court, you could get perjury in addition to assault and attempted mugging.”

“What’re you, a lawyer?”

Michael laughed, the asshole, and Fisk grimaced. “No,” he said firmly.

“His sister is,” explained Michael, too cheerful for a man in handcuffs. “And his brother-in-law’s a judge.”

“Aw, man, just tell me you ain’t related to Thrope,” Tommy said.

Michael looked horrified. “Fisk’s sister has way better taste than that.”

“I thought you said this was your first date,” said Tommy. “You know his sister?”

“Sisters,” said Michael, “and yeah, we’ve known each other for years,” he added, because apparently they were going to casually chat it up with the guy who’d just been doing his best to stab them both and got them arrested.

“Man, don’t tell me, y’all those sort of idiots who pussyfooted around each other making other people put up with your damn eye sex with your no homo bullshit?”

Fisk glared. “Yeah, okay, because we’re going to take relationship advice from you. Also, I’m pretty sure pussyfoot is offensive.”

“No, it refers to cats tiptoeing, not genitalia,” Michael argued.

“Why do cats tiptoe?” asked Tommy.

Fisk slammed his head against the window. “I’m not your kindergarten teacher,” he snapped.

“You three realize I can hear you, right?” their arresting officer asked.

Michael, damn him to the deepest pits of whatever fiery hell was reserved for optimists, laughed.

-

The detective - they’d managed to be arrested by a fully-fledged detective, of course - barely got them into the precinct before his radio squawked and proceeded to inform him of a 187 at 17th and Market.

Fisk frowned, because Michael’s head had jerked up at the words “one-eighty-seven”, and he did not need Michael asking questions about murders.

Detective Todd snapped his fingers. “Patil, with me. Sumner, check the holding cell availability.”

“3 is open,” one of the officers said, and the woman who was apparently Sumner turned her attention to Fisk and Michael and Tommy.

“10-57?”

“Yep. Call in Fitz.”

“10-4.”

Sumner surveyed them curiously. “This the 419, Detective?”

“It sure is. Just get their statements, and don’t leave them alone.”

Fisk watched Todd and Patil leave with a sense of overwhelming relief; Sumner seemed more amused than annoyed by them.

“What you do to get put on babysitting duty?” Tommy asked.

Sumner smirked and rolled away from her desk - in a wheelchair. “Can’t quite make the trip,” she said. “Congratulations, you get to give your statement to Liu. Liu?”

Liu, as it turned out, was a frankly enormous man: he was broad shouldered with flawlessly defined muscles and strong eyebrows.

“He’s gonna use you as a toothpick,” Fisk said.

Tommy shuddered.

Sumner, meanwhile, looked back and forth between Fisk and Michael; Michael was not-so-subtly reading an open file on Patil’s desk. She leaned forward and closed the case file with a suspicious glare at Michael.

“I think you should recheck this guy’s alibi, the LGBT Community Center closes at six on Fridays,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” she said, and went to unlock the holding cell. “In.”

Michael went inside, sparing a horrified look at Fisk as Sumner led him away. The word codependent came to mind.

“Sit,” she said, when they were out of Michael’s earshot. Fisk complied instantly. “Name?”

“Nonopherian Fisk.”

“Address?”

He rattled off the pertinents, and Sumner glanced up at him in surprise. “You’ve been arrested before,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.

“I was a kid,” he said quickly.

“All right. Tell me what happened.”

“Michael and I were walking home.”

“You were going to walk from the Tenderloin to Lisbon Street?” She asked.

Fisk shook his head; that was a three hour walk, easily. “Michael wanted to go to the Golden Gate greenhouse.”

“That’s still an hour’s walk,” she said.

“Okay, let me be more specific. Michael and I met up at the restaurant. We were both riding motorcycles. We decided we wanted to walk to the conservatory, so we left our motorcycles at work, which is about 45 minutes brisk walk from the conservatory. My sister has a car. She went to dinner with Michael’s sister and Michael’s cousin today. We called Michael’s sister, and she offered to drive us back to work with my sister’s car when we were done looking at the flowers.”

“And that walk brought you into Lower Haight.”

“Yep.”

“Tell me what happened then?”

“We saw a woman struggling with someone trying to take her purse. Michael, being a chivalric idiot, intervened.”

“Intervened how?” Sumner asked, her pen scratching across the paper.

Fisk sighed. “He ran up and yelled ‘hey!’. Tommy, the mugger, panicked and attacked Michael. I stayed back and called the cops, because, you know, that’s what smart people do. But then the guy pulled a knife. The lady ran off, and I went in to keep Michael from getting his insides rearranged by a switchblade. I picked up the knife, and that’s when your boss rolled up.”

“That sounds ridiculous, you know that, right?”

“My life is ridiculous,” he said.

-

“Well,” said Sumner, looking at the reports. “I’ve got to process you guys, but… your story checks out, and there’s no victim involved, so it looks like I’ll just be letting all three of you go.”

“Hell yeah!” Tommy said.

Michael beamed. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“Can I give you a tip?” she said, squinting at him. “Mind your own business, in the future.”

“I can’t just stand by when people are in danger,” said Michael. “It’s my moral obligation as a fellow human being to protect everyone I can, be it from petty theft to murder,” he said, and Fisk could almost see the dramatic backdrop and cinematic lighting.

“Is he for real?” Lieutenant Sumner asked Fisk.

“Unfortunately,” said Fisk, “he’s completely legit.”

She looked at Michael with a mixture of disbelief and starry-eyed wonderment. Then, “All the good ones are gay,” she said, mournfully.

“Actually,” Michael began, probably about to explain pansexuality to her.

Fisk pinched his arm and said, “We’re sure you’ll find a perfectly nice heterosexual boy.”

“I’m heterosexual,” said Tommy. “What you doing Friday night, babe?”

“Down boy,” she said.


	9. Love You Much Better

“Well,” Michael said, awkwardly. “That was an adventure.”

Fisk glared at him without any real heat, and then relented. “I suppose it was more interesting than looking at flowers.”

“Speaking of,” said Michael, and reached into his coat with a grin; Lieutenant Sumner had released their possessions back to them, including the now somewhat battered bouquet of brightly colored daisies.

“Now they’ll match our apartment,” said Fisk, studying a broken petal with a small smile.

Michael blurted out, “Can I kiss you?” without thinking.

“Well, I saved your life earlier, so I think I’ve more than earned a kiss,” said Fisk.

The flowers got a bit more crushed by Michael grabbing Fisk by his cardigan and tugging him in for a kiss. Fisk didn’t complain.

When they broke apart, they stared at each other a little too long before Michael cleared his throat and said, “So.”

“Thanks for dinner,” said Fisk. “And, uh, the flowers.”

“Thank you for agreeing to go on a date with me,” Michael said. He knew he was too stiff, but Fisk didn’t seem to notice. “I—uh, we’re working opening shift tomorrow, we should…”

“Head to bed,” agreed Fisk. “Er,” he added, because his thoughts had probably gone the same route Michael’s were.

“Not together, right,” Michael said.

Fisk nodded. “Right. Except, uh, you know. In the same room. But different beds.”

“Like always, yes, of course, we’re—um. Do you want to do this again sometime?” said Michael.

“Okay,” Fisk said, “yeah, okay.”

“The date part, not the being arrested thing.”

-

Michael spent the next few days making up for the disastrous date: it started with “Sorry” written in his morning coffee, extra caffeine; he fielded off a customer in Fisk’s line who wanted a refund on a coffee she’d bought the previous day because she hadn’t liked it; he even laughed aloud when Fisk threatened to sell an unattended child with a large cappuccino to a circus if her father didn’t keep her from trying to sneak into the back room.

There wasn't much he could do, however, at the sight of a familiar face. "Lieutenant Sumner," he said. "Uh, what can I get for you?"

"A mint chocolate chip hot cocoa. Extra whipped cream, please."

"Isn't this a bit out of your way? There's a cafe off Stanyon, that's got to be within walking distance of the station." He felt himself flush. "Or, uh. Rolling distance?"

She ignored the correction beyond raising her eyebrows at it, and continued. "I wanted to follow up with you, make sure you're not worried Tommy Larimer will make trouble. He talks big, but he doesn't come our way for anything more violent than cutting fanny packs off tourists."

"Fisk would call that a public service," said Michael, with a faint smile. Fisk sounded like a New Yorker when it came to tourists.

"I don't know, I hear they're making a comeback. Anyway... your tip about the alibi paid off. We brought him in for another round of questioning and he cracked like an eagle egg on illegal pesticides. We can't pay you the reward, since you looked at the file illegally," she paused for a stern look, "but..." she held up a twenty dollar bill and dropped it in the tip jar. "A tip for a tip seems fair."

"Lieutenant," he said.

"Alanna," she told him.

"Alanna. I can't take your money."

"It's Lester's," she said. "Detective Todd sent me, in a manner of speaking."

He gave her a dubious look, but she ignored him in favor of taking a long gulp of the hot cocoa he’d handed her. “Oh, Christ, that’s amazing,” she said. “Consider that tip earned twice. How much do I owe you?”

“Two seventeen,” he said. “Civil servant discount.”

The door to the kitchens opened. “Michael, have you seen the rest of my yarn, I—oh,” Fisk broke off, staring at Lieutenant Sumner. The door hit him as it fell shut, knocking him stumbling forward. “Sumner. What are you doing here?”

“Just thanking Michael here for his help,” she said, smiling at Michael warmly. Her gaze flicked to Fisk, who was clutching a half-made beanie and his crocheting needles. “You crochet? My grandmother used to do that, she could make amazing things.”

Michael winced as Fisk’s face settled into a polite smile he usually reserved for customers he wanted to murder with vats of scalding coffee. Alanna looked between them with a bemused expression. Then, “Well,” she said, “I should be going. You two… have fun.”

She left a fiver on the counter and rolled out of the shop in a haste. Michael whirled on Fisk. “What the hell, Fisk.”

“I don’t like her,” he said.

“You’re jealous because of that thing she said about all the good guys being gay!”

Fisk scowled, confirming Michael’s suspicions in his own way. “Piss off, Michael.”

“Jealousy is for things, not people.”

“I know that,” Fisk snapped.

“Then why are you being so irrational about this?”

“It’s irrationality, Mike, so by definition, I can’t just turn it off by knowing that it isn’t logical to be jealous.”

“You can turn off being an asshole to perfectly nice people, Nonny, especially since she just left us a twenty-three dollar tip!”

“Wait, what?” said Fisk, turning his attention to the tip jar; nothing got Fisk’s attention like money. “Why?”

“To thank me for solving a crime. Not to mention, I think she’s gay for Patil, that other lady cop.”

“No, trust me, she’s straight as an arrow, you can see it from a mile away. My gaydar is impeccable.”

“Okay, gaydar is not actually a thing, Fisk, you’re completely—”

Fisk dropped his crochet needles and hauled Michael in for a kiss. Michael stared at him, trying to figure out how to react to it.

“Michael,” Fisk said, going back off tiptoes, “what are you doing Saturday?”

“Uh,” said Michael, brain still offline from the unexpected kiss. “Nothing?” he ventured, because Fisk was in charge of the calendar, so really it was a silly question and… oh.

“We’re going on a date Saturday. So, remember how to kiss back by then, ‘kay?”

-

“I still don’t get it,” said Michael. “Why would he ask me on a second date in the middle of an argument?”

Kathy shrugged and gestured at the TV, where Gordon Ramsay was yelling at a restaurateur. “Why is this man serving strawberries with chicken? Who let this guy get as far as owning his own restaurant without telling him his food sucks? Why would you ask an aromantic asexual for relationship advice? The world’s full of mysteries.”

“I know this isn’t your wheelhouse,” he said.

“Unless Fisk’s a complex theoretical mathematical equation, yes, it’s not my wheelhouse. But I suppose I can give you my best guess. He was being an idiot. And because he’s an idiot, he doesn’t speak normal human language, like “sorry” or “I love you”, so he just asked you out, and is probably planning a really great date, and it’s probably going to go horribly wrong.”


	10. You Are The Moon

“Not telling you,” Fisk said, when Michael asked him for the millionth time what they were doing for their date.

“Why does it involve you spending hours locked in the bedroom?”

Rosamund wolf-whistled almost absently while she arranged the baked goods in the display case.

“I have to make something,” he said.

“Is it kinky?” asked Rosamund, when Michael returned to the kitchen, making sad, why won’t you tell me puppy dog eyes the entire way.

“The date’s not in the bedroom, Rosa, it just happens that that’s the only room in the apartment I can work.”

“I know what he’s doing, and it’s adorable,” Kathy said. “Not kinky at all.”

Judith snorted. “Everything’s a kink if you look hard enough.”

“This is only their second date,” said Lissy, “and Fisk’s a gentleman. Gentlemen wait until the third date.”

“Really? Three? That’s the rule?” Rosamund asked. “Damn, I haven’t dated many gentlemen. I certainly didn’t marry a gentlemen.”

“One night stands and dates are different, Rose,” Kathy said.

Fisk finally gave up the pretense of focusing on cleaning the steamer. “First of all, I’m not a gentleman. Secondly, did not need to know that much about you and Rudy, Rosamund. And thirdly, Kathy, Lissy, what would either of you know?”

“Not experiencing attraction doesn’t mean I’m ignorant of the etiquette involved,” Kathy said mildly.

Lissy ignored Fisk completely, instead giving an undue amount of attention to setting up the microphone for the poetry reading.

“Lissy,” he said, “what would you know?”

Judith arched her eyebrows at Fisk with an annoyingly superior smirk. “She waited longer than you did, little brother.”

“Whoa, what?” Lissy fumbled the extension cord.

“Lucy Hayes, after the Spring Fling dance your sophomore year, in the back of Carly’s boyfriend’s Civic,” said Judith. At his horrified look, she explained, “Ham told me.”

“Ham,” said Fisk. “Motherf--wait, Ham? You hung out with Ham? Why?”

Judith smirked. “Well, it wasn’t a date.”

Fisk groaned and threw a balled up paper towel at her head. It fell far short - he’d never been one for sports - and she laughed at him.

“Bitch,” he muttered.

Kathy leaned across the counter to flick his ear, frowning. “Be nice.”

“Yeah, I could pick a far more embarrassing poem,” said Judith.

“You’re not picking the poem I’m reading,” he said. He’d selected a Catullus poem, and fully intended to read it in Latin, because he’d be damned if he was going to put up with reading his own work again.

“No, I’m picking the poem I’m reading,” she told him.

Kathy, Rosamund, and Judith all exchanged looks, with matching smirks. Fisk realized, a little too late, that they were all wearing the same color nail polish. “Wait,” he said, “have you three been conspiring?”

“Four,” said Lissy, and, yes, that was. The exact same nail polish.

Fisk let his head fall against the countertop with a thunk. "This is going to be an embarrassing poetry reading, isn't it?" he said.

"Of course not," Kathy said, and patted his shoulder soothingly.

(She lied.)

-

“Wake up,” Fisk said shortly, dropping a pair of jeans and a t-shirt on Michael’s still-sleeping form.

Michael blinked up at him, probably thinking that he was dreaming that Fisk was awake before him, since Fisk prided himself on sleeping in to reasonable times. “What?”

“We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”

“It’s… six am. On our day off. Where are we going?”

Fisk sighed. “It’s a surprise, and neither of us are going to tell you, so just get up and get ready to go.”

“How am I supposed to get ready if I don’t know where we’re going?” Michael said, with a distinctly petulant tone.

“I have everything we’ll need,” Fisk said, lifting his duffel bag. He’d had to delve into his savings for this, but it was going to be worth it, because Michael was going to have an actual, literal heart attack. Well, hopefully not a literal one. Fisk was actually somewhat looking forward to this himself, oddly enough. He chalked it up to the fact that there was going to be near-endless amounts of booze.

-

“How far are we going?” Michael asked, wide-eyed, when the passed Sacramento and Fisk didn’t slow down.

Fisk pretended not to hear and changed the music to the first thing he spotted that he knew Michael liked - “Midnight Memories”, because Michael was apparently a fifteen year old girl - and grinned when Michael gave up and starting singing along.

“Do you have Walk The Moon on there?” Kathy said, while Michael was busy playing air-drums.

“Of course,” Fisk told her. “I think Avalanche is one of my most-played songs.”

“Mm,” she said, which was… an odd reaction.

He didn’t get to dwell on it, though, because Michael had found a Fall Out Boy song, and Fall Out Boy came before mysterious commentary on his music tastes.

“You’re not taking me to prison, are you?” Michael joked, when the signs for Folsom started appearing. But he looked more serious, brow creasing in confusion, when they went past those exits too.

“Michael,” Fisk said, “Stop thinking so loudly. I can hear an ulcer developing, and I don’t want a matching one.”

Michael sighed and fidgeted and bit his lip and read each and every road sign, and got more and more confused the closer they got to Nevada. He had a few guesses -

“Hiking?”

“Nope.”

“Kayaking?”

“Gods, no.”

“…Gambling?”

“Michael, if we were going to Reno, why the hell would I take Route 50 instead of staying on I-80?”

\- but none of them came close.

Finally, about fifteen minutes out, Michael spotted the sign for Valhalla Renaissance Faire and slowly turned to look at Fisk.

“No way,” he said, but he was smiling at Fisk.

“Your costume’s in the duffel,” Fisk sighed.

Michael’s smile got impossibly wider and brighter. Fisk couldn’t even look at him, it was like looking at the goddamn sun.

“He made it by hand,” Kathy said. “Spent hours on it.”

“Shut up, Kathy,” Fisk said.

She was smiling fondly at him in the rearview mirror. “Thank you,” she added. “For making me on too. I haven’t been to a Renaissance faire before.”

“You’re missing out on turkey legs and beer and not much else,” he said.

Michael’s smile didn’t even falter at Fisk’s pessimism. Fisk, fighting a ridiculous, irrational smile himself, rolled his eyes.


End file.
